


A Whisper in the Dark

by Seti



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 12:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seti/pseuds/Seti
Summary: A misfortune befalls Will that Hannibal wasn't, for once, orchestrating. Hannibal is not pleased.





	

Hannibal Lector had learned, quite young, the one thing essential to his survival -self control. Since then he had perfected it in a thousand different ways. Whether ignoring the idiot who didn't understand the complex function of the turn signal, or suffering the sub-species of human that held up the ENTIRE grocery line for some misplaced 5 cent coupon - he recognized that in these situations that no matter how the world might benefit, it would not do to say, run them off the road or slice open their jugular with the edge of a frozen pizza box. 

That self control was saving him now as he stared across Jack Crawford's desk and down at the man himself.

"What do you mean." Hannibal asked, tone even and moderate, syllables at their usual rythm, "Will Graham has been missing for five days?"

'How dare you,' his inner voice shrieked in rage, 'borrow something of mine and so carelessly lose it.'

+++

Like all uncalculated misfortunes that befell Will Graham, this one originated from a case. A stupid useless case that Hannibal considered a waste of Will's talents (much less his own) - and so had more or less stayed out of it. 

A serial killer, sex-workers, exerts power over those he can, feels the world owes him, likely impotent, white, male, mid 30 to 40s... blah blah blah... 

The crime scenes were without artistry or complexity. The prostitutes' bodies found in dumpsters, behind gas stations - dead from a knife across the throat, a gunshot to the head, often paired with needle tracks and overdoses, raped with blunt objects. It was all just so pedestrian. Hannibal who, regardless of whether it had four legs or two , didn't eat street meat, couldn't have cared less about any of these junkies - he considered heroin and its opiod peers just the 21 century version of the plagues that use to periodically sweep Europe - clearing out the undesirables for the betterment of society. In short, he had no interest except that Will was slowly being consumed in it - a fine boned, high strung Arabian forced under yoke, endlessly plowing heavy fieltds of mud. Recruited by Jack Crawford's guilt trip - the mounting body count, the accompanying public outcry of bleeding heart liberals, the appearance of FBI incompetency... (or perhaps just FBI incompetency, Hannibal thought uncharitably), all required the best FBI profiler to be assigned to the case. Never mind that the psychological profile of this killer was so straightforward that any first year psych student could have done it. Will was wasted on this matter.

But Will, his wide blue eyes absorbing the tragic tales of these victim's lives, was in too deep. Slipped on the first puddle in his path, really, and started to drown. The victims - unwanted, unloved, abused, stripped of humanity by circumstance and poor choices... Their deaths, and the lives that led them there, sank beneath his skin and dragged him down. Session after session, Will would dedicate to tragic renditions of the victim's lives - dirges recited with endless detail, as if sharing their pathetic stories was somehow honouring them. By the fourth week Hannibal was reconsidering getting involved just to end his own suffering.

And if in ending this, he would quiet Will's pacing, get him eating and sleeping again, then Hannibal could stop having to pretend-worry about how haunted and exhausted Will looked... 

But Will didn't show up for his next appointment, and Hannibal swallowed the various leading questions that he had planned to just hurry this all along already. Will was prompt, and if not prompt, he was polite. To miss an appointment without explanation - well it was odd - the likely explanation was that Jack had kept Will out all night on the streets of Baltimore, 'just in case he saw something' not factoring in, or not caring about the cold weather, and that Will who saw monsters in shadows at the best of times, was terrible at basic surveillance.

Hannibal was a man of many errands. The next day he used one as an excuse and headed to Jack Crawford's office, expecting to find Will tipping over sideways on the couch from exhaustion. Eyes either half lidded and stubbornly blinking to stay open, or closed completely- body lax - surrendering to its physical limitations with a childlike awkwardness. Hannibal could never decide which state he preferred more - the struggle or the strange poses from the battle suddenly lost.

But Will wasn't on the couch. Instead, when Hannibal crossed the threshold of Jack's office, Jack had looked up at from his desk and said without greeting or preamble: "Will's been missing since Tuesday."

Hannibal did not rip Jack's tongue out of his mouth and swallow it like an oyster. Thank you self control.

++

Will woke up to a dry mouth, a headache, and a sick, twisted feeling in his stomach. His body consumed his attention, making it difficult to surface completely and bring his mind back on line. Who he was, where he was, why he was there, likely explanations were all secondary to surviving how god-awful he felt.

His arms were twisted behind him, his feet, with no socks and shoes, frozen, lying against rough concrete. His fingers felt swollen and numb, his nose packed with dried blood and every breath hurting as it fluttered shallowly through his chest and lungs.

He became cognizant that he was alive and likely to stay that way for at least the next few moments. Then realized that it was in stark contrast to the last thought he could remember: that he was about to die. 

Someone had come up at him, out of the shadows, from behind. Had pressed a knife against his throat, a needle into his arm.

Hinges creaked and Will felt the slight change of air signaling a door or a window opening. He blinked only to feel a soft material wrapped around his eyes. Blindfolded then, not blind. But no longer alone.

"So," a voice said, over a clatter of hard soled shoes. The sound filled the space, echoing off walls and ceilings like a drumroll. Building. More than one person then.

Something rubbed itself across his lips, wedging itself into his mouth, against his teeth. Will gagged at the taste of dirt and pavement. The toe of a shoe, he realized, before something thin and sharped pressed down on his throat. 

"Looks like we finally caught the fucking asshole preying on our sisters."

The object, a stiletto heel, Will thought wildly, pressed down harder, trapping his breath in his throat. "Ready to beg for your life, murderer?"

Whatever they expected or wanted, there was no way to respond as the shoe ground down deeper, nowhere to move - nothing to do but feel his consciousness slipping away again - his heartbeat growing ever more frantic in his ears, until it almost, but not quite, drowned out the small voice that whispered to him in the dark: 

Hannibal is not going to be happy.

+++  
_AN:End it there? I don't know if I could do anything longer justice - but oh could this go in so many dark and dastardly ways. Poor Will. Poor everyone else between him and Hannibal._  
:)


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